Classic Poetry Series John Lydgate - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive John Lydgate(1370 - 1450) John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England. Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/john-gower/">John Gower</a>. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. Life at the monastery of Bury St. Edmund's, where he spent most of his life, gave him a leisure that many another poet might have envied, and enabled him to explore and establish every major <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/geoffrey- chaucer/">Chaucerian</a> genre, except such as were manifestly unsuited to his profession, like the fabliau. In the Troy-book (30,117 lines), an amplified translation of the Trojan history of the thirteenth-century Latin writer Guido delle Colonne, commissioned by Prince Henry (later Henry V), he moved deliberately beyond Chaucer's Knight's Tale and his Troilus, to provide a full-scale epic. The Siege of Thebes (4716 lines) is a shorter excursion in the same field of chivalric epic. The Monk's Tale, a brief catalog of the vicissitudes of Fortune, gives a hint of what is to come in Lydgate's massive Fall of Princes (36,365), which is also derived, though not directly, from Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium. The Man of Law's Tale, with its rhetorical elaboration of apostrophe, invocation, and digression in what is essentially a saint's legend, is the model for Lydgate's legends of St. Edmund (3693) and St. Albon (4734), both local monastic patrons, as well as for many shorter saints' lives, though not for the richer and more genuinely devout Life of Our Lady (5932). <b>Early Life and Education</b> He was admitted to the Benedictine monastery of Bury St. Edmunds at fifteen and became a monk there a year later. <b>Patronage</b> Having literary ambitions (he was an admirer of Geoffrey Chaucer and a friend to his son, Thomas) he sought and obtained patronage for his literary work at the courts of Henry IV of England, Henry V of England and Henry VI of England. His patrons included, amongst many others, the mayor and aldermen of London, the chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral, Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and Henry V and VI, however his main supporter from 1422 was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. In 1423 he was made prior of Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex but soon www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1 resigned the office to concentrate on his travels and writing. He was a prolific writer of poems, allegories, fables and romances, yet his most famous works were his longer and more moralistic Troy Book, Siege of Thebes and the Fall of Princes. The Troy Book was a translation of the Latin prose narrative by Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae. At one time, the long allegorical poem The Assembly of Gods was attributed to him, but the work is now considered anonymous. Lydgate was also believed to have written London Lickpenny, a well-known satirical work; however, his authorship of this piece has been thoroughly discredited. He also translated the poems of Guillaume de Deguileville into English. In his later years he lived and probably died at the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds. <b>Talent</b> The Oxford English Dictionary cites Lydgate with the earliest record of using the word "talent" in reference to a gifted state of natural ability. <b>Quotations</b> "Who lesith his fredam, in soth, he lesith all." —an old proverb Lydgate included in his moral fable The Churl and the Bird Lydgate wrote that King Arthur was crowned in "the land of the fairy", and taken in his death by four fairy queens, to Avalon where he lies under a "fairy hill", until he is needed again. Lydgate is also credited with the first known usage of the adage "Needs must" in its fullest form: "He must nedys go that the deuell dryves” in his The Assembly of Gods. Shakespeare later uses it in All's Well That Ends Well. Lydgate is a character in a 2003 mystery novel The Bastard's Tale, by Margaret Frazer, which takes place in Bury St. Edmunds in 1447. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 That Now Is Hay Some-Tyme Was Grase Who clymbeth hyest gothe ofte base, Ensample in medowes thow mayst se That nowe is heye some tyme was grase. Lenvoye. Go forth anon, thou short dite, Bydde folke not trust this worlde at all, Bydde theme remembre on e cite Which is a-bove celestiall; Of precious stones bylt is the wall, Who clymbeth theder gothe nevar base, Out of that place may be no fall, Ther is no heye but all fresh grase. John Lydgate www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 The Floure Of Curtesye In Feverier, whan the frosty moone Was horned, ful of Phebus firy lyght, And that she gan to reyse her streames sone, Saynt Valentyne, upon thy blisful nyght Of dutie whan glad is every wight, And foules chese, to voyde her olde sorowe, Everyche his make, upon the next morowe, The same tyme, I herde a larke synge Ful lustely, agayne the morowe gray: 'Awake, ye lovers, out of your slombringe, This glad morowe, in al the haste ye may! Some observaunce dothe unto this day, Your choyse agen of herte to renewe, In confyrmyng forever to be trewe. 'And ye that be, of chosyng, at your large This lusty day, by custome of nature, Take upon you the blisful holy charge To serve love, whyle your lyfe may dure, With herte, body, and al your besy cure, Forevermore, as Venus and Cipride For you disposeth, and the god Cupyde. 'For joye owe we playnly to obey Unto this lordes mighty ordynaunce, And, mercylesse, rather forto dye, Than ever in you be founden varyaunce; And though your lyfe be medled with grevaunce, And, at your herte, closed be your wounde, Beth alway one, there as ye are bounde.' That whan I had herde and lysted longe, With devoute herte, the lusty melodye Of this hevenly comfortable songe, So agreable as by ermonye, I rose anon, and faste gan me hye Towarde a grove, and the way take, Foules to sene everyche chose his make. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4 And yet I was ful thursty in languisshyng; Myn ague was so fervent in his hete, Whan Aurora, for drery complaynyng, Can distyl her chrystal teeres wete Upon the soyle with sylver dewe so swete; For she durste, for shame, not apere Under the lyght of Phebus beames clere. And so, for anguysshe of my paynes kene, And for constraynte of my sighes sore, I set me downe under a laurer grene Ful pitously; and alway more and more, As I behelde into the holtes hore, I gan complayne myn inwarde deedly smerte, That aye so sore crampisshed myn herte. And whyle that I, in my drery payne Sate and behelde, aboute on every tre The foules sytte, alway twayne and twayne, Than thought I thus: 'Alas, what may this be, That every foule hath his lyberté Frely to chose, after his desyre, Everyche his make thus, fro yere to yere? 'The sely wrenne, the tytemose also, The lytel redbrest, have free election To flyen yfere and togyther go Where as hem lyst, aboute envyron, As they of kynde have inclynacion, And as Nature, empresse and gyde Of every thyng, lyst to provyde. But man alone, alas, the harde stounde! Ful cruelly, by kyndes ordynaunce, Constrayned is, and by statute bounde And debarred, from al suche plesaunce. What meneth this? What is this purveyaunce Of God above, agayne al right of kynde, Without cause, so narowe man to bynde? 'Thus may I sene, and playne, alas! www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5 My woful houre and my disaventure, That doulfully stonde in the same caas So ferre behynde from al helth and cure. My wounde abydeth lyke a sursanure; For me fortune so felly lyste dispose, My harme is hyd, that I dare not disclose. 'For I my herte have set in suche a place Where I am never lykely forto spede, So ferre I am hyndred from her grace That, save Daunger, I have none other mede; And thus, alas, I not who shal me rede, Ne for myne helpe shape remedye, For Male Bouche, and for false Envye. 'The whiche twayne aye stondeth in my wey Malyciously, and false Suspection Is very cause also that I dey, Gynnyng and rote of my distruction, So that I fele, in conclusyon, With her traynes that they wol me shende Of my labour, that dethe mote make an ende. 'Yet or I dye, with herte, wyl, and thought, To God of Love this avowe I make: As I best can, howe dere that it be bought, Where so it be that I slepe or wake, Whyle Boreas dothe the leaves shake, As I have heyght plainly, tyl I sterve, For wel or wo, that I shal her serve. 'And for her sake, nowe this holy tyme, Saynt Valentyne, somwhat shal I write; Although so be that I cannot ryme, Nor curyously by no crafte endyte, Yet lever I have that she put the wyte In unconnyng than in neglygence, Whatever I saye of her excellence.